AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Yesterday’s unprovoked attack by Israeli armoured vehicles firing into the Gaza Strip at Palestinian farmers and their homes near Khan Younis in south Gaza seems to have been a follow on from an earlier incursion by Israeli on Tuesday when Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into the Gaza near the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the Strip to destroy agricultural plots. Both of these attacks against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip seem to be part of a deliberate program by the Israeli Defence Forces to deliberately provoke Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against the Israelis just as the Israelis are attempting to provoke Hezbollah in Lebanon by moving tanks up to the border and increasing their overflights in Lebanese airspace.

As I wrote on Wednesday, this provocative activity in the Gaza and at the border of Lebanon isn’t random or spontaneous, they are organised and deliberate. They are designed to provoke retaliation in a well co-ordinated effort to ultimately instigate an attack against Iran.

This latest move, coupled with the increasingly bellicose propaganda campaign Israel is waging over Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program, could easily escalate into the war the Israelis have been trying desperately to provoke ever since their last unsuccessful attempt to provoke a confrontation with Iran when it attacked and then invaded Lebanon in 2006.

In any future war with Lebanon, Israel has stated that it will regard the Lebanese government and the Lebanese armed forces as much an enemy as Hezbollah who, according to a ‘Jerusalem Post’ report, are now actually training Lebanese army officers. This means that any full scale attack by Israel against Lebanon will include massive air attacks against Lebanese government and utilities infrastructure all over Lebanon starting, as per tradition, with attacks against Lebanon’s airports, airfields and military bases, supplies and communications networks.

The Lebanese air force, which, apart from a handful of very outdated Hawker Hunter aircraft, at the moment consists mainly of helicopters used for both attack work and transport, is, significantly, awaiting delivery of 10 MiG-29 aircraft gifted from Russia which are due to arrive next month. These aircraft, when flown by experienced pilots and appropriately armed, will be a reasonable match when up against Israel’s F-16’s. Israel would certainly be keen not to have to deal with these aircraft, especially if the Lebanese contract experienced Russian pilots to fly them, and so would be anxious to take on Lebanon before these aircraft arrive.

Israel is itching to go and the imminent delivery of the 10 MiG-29’s might just be the trigger they need.

Israel has made it quite clear that in any future conflict with Hezbollah, Israel will regard the Lebanese government as being responsible for Hezbollah’s actions. This means that any attack Israel launches against Hezbollah will now include action against all of Lebanon and Lebanon’s armed forces.

Since Israel now regards Hezbollah as an integral part of the Lebanese government, any future war launched by Israel to destroy Hezbollah will have to involve a full-on invasion – which, of course, is what the Israelis have always wanted to do and have attempted a number of times before. But next time it will different. Next time the Israelis invade Lebanon it will be with overwhelming force and the resulting occupation of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River will likely be permanent.

The one obstacle to Israel’s stance against Hezbollah is Iran. Iran supports Hezbollah with massive amounts of financial aid and military hardware. It is quite clear that Israel’s strategy is to find a casus belli with which to launch an attack against either Lebanon or Iran. If Israel finds, or creates, a cause to attack Lebanon first then it will likely attack Iran soon after based on the notion that Iran is clearly supporting Lebanon by providing Hezbollah with weapons and possibly even men. If, on the other hand, Israel decides to launch a so-called ‘unilateral pre-emptive’ attack against Iran (there will be nothing at all ‘unilateral’ about such an attack; the US will actually be up to their ears in it) then Israel will launch an attack against Lebanon claiming that it would need to prevent retaliatory attacks on Israel by Hezbollah. Either way, when push comes to shove, Israel will want to be killing more than one bird in such a conflict.

Naturally, Israel will also want to take care of Hamas in the Gaza Strip at the same time as it launches any attack against Hezbollah.

Once committed to war, the US will have no alternative but to support Israel and will abandon all pretence about wanting to find a diplomatic way out of its differences with Iran.

Israel’s rhetoric against Hezbollah and Iran are yet again beginning to converge and is becoming heightened. It’s has happened before and such a final confrontation type war has only been avoided in the past because Israel was unable to find a strong enough casus belli to justify it.

While the US is still insisting that a diplomatic solution be found to Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’ in order to satisfy US public opinion which would not support an American attack against Iran, the US knows full well that in fact Iran has no such ‘nuclear weapons program’. This can only mean then that the US is keeping the ‘Iran has nuclear weapons’ card up its sleeve to use when Israel decides its ready to launch its final confrontation with Iran. If all goes to plan, the Israelis hope by the end of it to be in southern Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and even possibly the West Bank permanently while the US will hope that a short sharp but brutal onslaught will bring about regime change in Iran.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton seemingly upset the Zionists of Israel recently when she remarked that the US would protect Israel and other Middle East allies from Iran if Iran becomes nuclear armed. She said the US would be prepared to build a ‘defence umbrella’ that would neutralise Irans attempt to ‘dominate’ if it were to become nuclear armed.

If one was to accept the rhetoric and propaganda that Iran does indeed have a ‘nuclear weapons program’ as Israel and her allies claim, then one wonders what it is that is upsetting the Israelis who would be the beneficiaries of such a defensive measure – and, presumably, at no cost to them. One has to ask then; ‘What’s the problem?’

The problem is; it’s not what the Israeli Zionists want the US to do as far as Iran is concerned. For Israel, the problem is not Iran’s nuclear weapons program – they know full well that Iran doesn’t actually have one and the ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ rhetoric is just propaganda to con the world into supporting Israel. What Israel really wants is regime change in Iran so that Israel can deal with Hezbollah and Hamas without Iran supporting them with weapons.

Now, not only does Israel know that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program, but so does the US in which case; what exactly is Hilary Clinton talking about?

The problem is that the Obama administration, who would actually like to see ‘regime change’ in Iran as much as Israel would, has painted itself into a bit of a corner. Politically, he can’t just go joining in with Israel in a pre-emptive attack against Iran without good cause. And, for the American people, simply accusing the Iranians of having ‘a nuclear weapons program’ without any proof whatsoever is hardly ‘good cause’, especially since the previous President had already pulled that stunt with Iraq. The only way out of the dilemma for Obama is for Israel to ‘unilaterally’ attack Iran which would then force a fait accompli situation on Obama who would feel he had no alternative but to support Israel by also attacking Iran in order to prevent any Iranian retaliation against Israel.

Any talk of peace with the Palestinians based on settlement withdrawal can be kissed goodbye and, of course, the Israelis would be just hoping that the Palestinians and Hezbollah react to an attack on Iran by launching attacks against Israel so that the Israelis could then fully invade and occupy the Gaza, the west Bank and south Lebanon up to the Litani River. And with such a major escalation, the US will just let them get on with it and the UN would be ignored entirely.

So, is Clinton really getting up Israel’s nose, or is she actually encouraging the Israelis to launch an attack against Iran first so that the US would then have an excuse to join in?

Sunday, July 19, 2009

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, millions of ordinary people – not just lefties, but plain ordinary people of all ages, professions and class, many of whom had never taken part in any protest before – took to the streets in unprecedented numbers both in national capitals and in small country towns around the world to loudly protest the inevitable war.

It didn’t make a blind bit of difference; a western world predominately lead by right-wing governments determined to go to war regardless of what their peoples demanded, refused to listen and went to war anyway.

Western governments learnt their lesson however. In order to avoid a repetition of those massive worldwide rallies, wars in future will not be announced so blatantly. With Iraq, the world watched as the Western powers built up their forces, issued transparent ultimatums and then invaded. The world watched this happen over a long period of time as though it were following a prearranged and well publicised agenda. By August 2002 the world knew invasion was all but inevitable. An anti-war movement rapidly grew with demonstrations taking place on a regular basis around the world.

This time around, as the Western powers gear up for an attack on Iran, the prospect of great protests and rallies against such a war are remote. The reason for this is simple: The build up for war is not so visible. Whereas in the lead-up to the attack against Iraq the West fed the public a running commentary, albeit based on lies, on why they were about to attack Iraq, in this coming war there is no direct threat of war from the US. This time around the US is playing a different game. With Iran, the US are playing the good cop - bad cop game with Israel playing the bad cop and the US appearing to be conciliatory – but only if Iran is prepared to be.

The problem is; while the Israelis and the US are accusing Iran of exactly the same things they accused Iraq of, no one is actually threatening or planning to invade Iran. The hope this time is to bring about ‘regime change’ without invasion. The casus belli for attack is the single issue of Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program which the Israelis and their Western allies accuse Iran of having despite the total lack of any evidence that Iran has such a program. While there are similarities between the rhetoric used today against Iran and the rhetoric used against Iraq, the main difference is in the perceptions of the threat of war. Whereas everyone just knew that Bush was determined to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein regardless of what Saddam did, the perception this time is of a President Obama who on the surface seems genuinely concerned to avoid attacking Iran and even looks as though he’s trying to restrain Israel from attacking Iran. While this perception prevails, there’s no need for the world to protest the possibility of another war. For some the perception is that Obama will actually prevent Israel from attacking. All of these perceptions have given the world a false though somewhat tenuous sense of security.

Just as the Bali bombings came at a time when public opinion was ranged against a looming war against Iraq, the recent bombings in Indonesia provides an opportunity for the governments of the Western world to remind all that the potential for Islamic violence is still very much alive as Israel ratchets up the rhetoric against Iran.

The reality, however, is far different from the perceptions and the world should take note before it is too late. The US has recently indicated that Israel must do what it needs to do to maintain what it thinks is its own security. This is just another way of saying that if Israel feels the need to attack Iran then the US would not stand in its way.

However, in order to attack Iran, Israel must contrary to the public perception that the US is trying to build, have help in some form or another from the US. Israel cannot possibly attack Iran completely independently of the US. If for nothing else, the huge amounts of military jet fuel needed for such a strike will have to come from the US, and most of the bunker-buster type munitions used will, in all likelihood, come from the US.

If Israel is permitted the use of Saudi airspace as has recently been reported, then the Israelis will not need to get permission from either the Iraqis or the US to use Iraqi airspace; they will only need to over-fly Saudi Arabia. Use of Saudi airspace in order to avoid using Iraqi airspace will be of paramount importance to the US if they are to maintain the perception of remaining ignorant of Israel planning a specific attack against Iran.

The world should ignore the perceptions; they are just as deceitful as the lies Bush told prior to the invasion of Iraq. An attack against Iran is as inevitable as the attack against Iraq was but this time we’ll get little or no warning of it. We’ll just wake up one morning to find that the world will have become an even more dangerous place to live in and the Global Economic Crisis will be the least of our worries.

Monday, July 13, 2009

According to George Tenet’s memoir, ‘At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA’, it was General Mike Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency, who first hinted at the idea of monitoring phone and email communications outside of the powers that were already available. Tenet writes:

“I remember reflecting on testimony Gen. Mike Hayden, the director of NSA, had given to a public hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in 2000. Mike created quite a stir when he said that if Usama bin Ladin had crossed the bridge from Niagara Falls, Ontario, to Niagara Falls, New York, there were provisions of US law that would offer him [Hayden] protections with regard to how the NSA could cover him. Mike would late say that he was using this as a stark hypothetical. On September 12, 2001, it became real.”

Tenet then goes on to say:

“After the 9/11 attacks, using his existing authorities, Hayden implemented a program to monitor communications to and from Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attacks were planned. With regard to the NSA’s policy of minimisation, balancing US privacy and inherent intelligence value, Mike moved from a peacetime to a wartime standard. He briefed me on this and I approved. By early October 2001, Hayden had briefed the full House Intelligence Committee and the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

It was at this point that Cheney asked Tenet “if the NSA could do more”.

Tenet explains:

“Our ability to monitor al-Qa’ida’s planning was limited because of constraints we had imposed on ourselves through the passing of certain US laws in the late 1970s. I called on Mike to relay the vice-presidents enquiry. Mike made it clear that he could do no more within the existing authorities. We went to see the vice-president together. Mike laid out what could be done that would be feasible, prudent, and effective.Within a week new authorities were granted to allow the NSA to pursue what is now known as the ‘terrorist surveillance program’.” (1)

Clearly it was Dick Cheney who instigated the action required to allow the NSA to conduct illegal wiretapping of phones and email communications and it was Cheney and Hayden who had gone to Cheney to fill him in on the details of what exactly what they wanted to do. According to Tenet, all this happened by November 2001.

It wasn’t until four years later that the world got to learn of what had been going on when The New York Times writers, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, exposed the illegal wiretapping in an explosive article that The New York Times published on 16 December 2005. In it Risen and Lichtblau say that Bush signed off on the order in early 2002 but, from the way Tenet calls it, it seems more likely that Bush signed it off closer to the end of 2001 after pressure from Cheney.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The exposé by Risen and Lichtblau only came about because James Risen was about to launch his book ‘State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration’, in which Risen writes a whole chapter on the illegal wiretapping affair.(2) However, according to Walter Isaacson who reviewed Risen’s book in The New York Times, Risen’s The New York Times article had actually been written about a year before it was eventually published but the Bush administration had asked the NYT not to publish and the NYT had obliged thus making themselves as complicit in the cover up as Bush, Cheney, the NSA and George Tenet of the CIA.

Cheney, Tenet and Hayden between them have a lot to answer to. Not only were their deeds immoral, they were also very illegal.

ENDNOTES(1) George Tenet, ‘At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA’. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007.) p. 237.

(2) James Risen, ‘State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration’. (New York: Free Press, 2006.) Chapter 2. pp. 39-60.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

A headline article in the ‘Jerusalem Post’ today blared ‘Emerging settlement deal will let US, Israel claim victory’. The article went on to explain: “According to senior government officials, under this type of solution, Israel would declare a moratorium of a few months on the settlement issue, possibly half a year, while the US would give Israel a green light to complete a still-to-be-determined number of housing units in the settlements that are in advanced stages of construction.”

It seems, however, that the Palestinian people, whose lands these settlements are being built on, don’t actually get a say on the subject. Somehow it’s now the US that decides where and when settlements can be built on Palestinian lands.

The fact is; the issue of settlements in the West Bank has nothing to do with the US. The Palestinian people have not asked the US to negotiate on their behalf, and have certainly not authorised the US to concede any lands whatsoever within the West Bank to the Zionist settlers. For the Palestinian people the issue is simply resolved: Every single settler on Palestinian territory should leave; it’s as simple as that.

The Palestinian people seem to have been completely forgotten in these discussions. It’s as though they weren’t there. It’s almost as though somehow the lands now belonged to the US and that they were now negotiating with Israel over its use.

The reality of the US-Israeli ‘deal’ is that, as usual, everything has been put off until some other time in the future. And then it’ll be just more talks that are likely to go on for years with nothing ever eventually transpiring.

But then, of course, this is just what the Israelis want; more time while they wait for an opportunity to do what they do best and that is to find some casus belli with which to simply take what they want.

This whole charade of ‘settlement talks’ is just another Israeli time-wasting exercise while they wait for the ideal moment to strike at their enemies. Netanyahu and his Zionist government have no intention of ever giving up West Bank settlements, indeed, their intentions are just the opposite; to eventually find a way to overrun, occupy and then eventually annex the entire West Bank to become part of a Greater Israel of the future.

The Israelis hope that ‘Irans nuclear weapons program’ will be the trigger they need to strike at their enemies and realise their dream of a Greater Israel. Meanwhile, what will the rest of the world be doing?

In an interview on Sunday, Vice-President Joe Biden, when asked, “…if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?” responded saying: “Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.”

Biden was then asked: “You say we can't dictate, but we can, if we choose to, deny over-flight rights here in Iraq. We can stand in the way of a military strike”, to which he responded, “I'm not going to speculate… on those issues, other than to say Israel has a right to determine what's in its interests, and we have a right and we will determine what's in our interests.”

Yesterday (5 July) ‘Timesonline’ reported that the Saudis had made it clear to Meir Dagan, Israel’s Mossad chief, that they would not object to Israeli overflights if they were on their way to targets in Iran. While a flight to Iran from Israel via Saudi Arabia would be much longer that a direct flight to Iran overflying Jordan and Iraq, a flight via Saudi Arabia would not require permission from any other country; not even the US to fly over Iraq. And if the Israelis can get permission from the Saudis to have support aircraft in the air in Saudi airspace to refuel the Israeli strike aircraft over, say, the Persian Gulf, then an Israeli strike against Iran is feasible.

It’s interesting that the report about the Saudi’s giving clearance for overflights to attack Iran were quickly denied by Netanyahu’s office. Clearly, the Israelis are anxious to bury this information though, one suspects, that it is now too late and the Iranians will now have their spies in Saudi Arabia scanning the skies and radio bands for high flying aircraft heading west to east across Saudi Arabia toward the Persian Gulf.

It may well be that Israel could be keen to take advantage of the unrest that has recently unsettled Iran but now seems to have died down. A strike now, they may feel, might just reignite the embers of insurrection that still glow especially if there was also a strike against Iran’s security forces and it’s military.

Even if Israel did strike against Iran via Saudi skies, Israel would still need to rely on the US for support. The fuel required for the mission would need to be supplied by the US as would most of the munitions. US forces would also need to be on standby ready to prevent any Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel and the US. Israel would also need to have its troops on standby at home in preparedness for retaliatory attacks from both Hezbollah and Hamas.

For Israel, a Hamas and Hezbollah strike against them would be what they want. It would provide the casus belli for Israel to invade both the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon – perhaps all of Lebanon – knowing that the Iranians would not be in a position to help them. And with Iran out of the equation, Syria would not dare move against Israel.

With the failure of the post-election Iranian revolution, Israel will now resort to its old rhetoric of ‘Iran has a nuclear weapons program’ to try again to get public opinion onside for when they launch their attack against Iran to effect regime change. With the US now clearly not standing in the way and the Saudis prepared to let the US off the hook with regard to being seen by the world as facilitating an Israeli attack by allowing the Israelis to overfly Iraq despite all the talk of pursuing a “diplomatic solution”, everything seems in place for the Israelis to feel free to attack Iran when ever they feel they are ready.

The prospect of a final confrontation between Israel and Iran is now off the back burner and back on to the front burner. The problem is, If and when it happens, it won’t be a simple make or break fight for Israel or Iran; the repercussions will reverberate around the world for years to come.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

As the Zionists of Israel drift further to the right and increasingly demonstrate how their racial and expansionist policies for Israel are parallel to the policies of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, the extreme right-wing in the blogosphere seems to have become confused and increasingly unable to distinguish their left from their right.

The main cause of their confusion is rooted essentially in the irony of history whereby those peoples who suffered most at the hands of the Nazis are the same people that are now causing the most suffering – and for exactly the same reasons – to others.

The extreme right-wing is quite happy to call themselves right-wing because, even if for no other reason, it distinguishes them from their mortal enemies, the ‘Left’. The problem arises however, when it is realised that in calling themselves ‘right-wing’ they share the same ‘right-wing’ label as Hitler does and, because most of today’s modern right-wing are actually Zionists or Zionist supporters, they don’t, for obvious reasons, want to be associated with Hitler and the Nazis. Because there are still some on the outer fringes of the far right who really are Nazis inasmuch that they are white-supremacist style anti-Semites with an intense hatred of Jews – and, indeed, anyone else who isn’t white – today’s modern Zionists and their extreme right-wing supporters have constructed a new propaganda strategy to distinguish themselves from their Nazi look-alikes.

This new construct is designed for the rank and file dumb and gullible of the right. It argues that Hitler and the Nazis weren’t actually ‘right-wing’ because they were called ‘National Socialists’ and, according to the Zionist propagandists and their supporters, they had socialist ideals. The new propaganda further argues, because the name of Hitler’s party also included the word ‘Workers’ in it, (the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers Party), that this was further proof of the Nazis ‘left-wing’ roots. There is also a certain convenience in this new construct for the Zionists and their supporters because, not only do they think it disassociates them as right-wingers from the rather embarrassing and similarly labelled Nazis, but it now allows them to cast anti-Zionists, most of whom have a tendency to lean to the political left and who Zionists attempt to demonise as anti-Semites, into the newly constructed ‘Nazi is left-wing’ mould.

The new ‘Nazis were left-wing’ propaganda construct is currently being pushed via the right-wing blogs. Andrew Bolt, a Murdoch propagandist and blogger at Melbourne’s ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper, a couple of weeks ago highlighted the new propaganda in his column in which he argues that Jewish groups in Europe who worry about the recent gains the anti-Semitic right made in European elections should be far more concerned about the left-wing anti-Zionists in Europe and that the right-wing that are not anti-Semitic are the ‘Jews real friends’. Bolt then allows his bloggies to launch into the ‘Nazis were left-wing’ propaganda. Here are a few examples:

Bolt Bloggie ‘larrikin’ writes:“it [sic] was the German socialists who formed the Nazi party that instigated the holocaust and it is the left that now demonise Israelis and act as apologist for the islamists [sic] threatening to annihilate Israel. own [sic] it, leftard [sic].” ‘larrikin’ goes on to comment elsewhere:“…you can’t be ‘right’ and neo-Nazi because Nazism is a creature of the left. If by ‘right’ you mean the opposite of leftism then you are referring to someone who is, essentially, a supporter of the classic republic as a legal and political model. Therefore the ‘right’ is always opposed to dictators and oligarchs, whatever they call themselves and regardless of the form of goose stepping they practice. the left on the other hand ultimately and invariably support dictators and oligarchs.”

While another Bolt bloggie, Alan Mears, writes:“Hitler was actually from the left, the NAZI party was the Workers Nationalist Socialist Party. What is it with the left? They always attribute the evils deeds committed by their own by using the word “Extreme” with the word Right.”

Regular Bolt bloggie ‘Verax’ responded to Mears’ remark that “Hitler was from the left” saying:“You are wasting your time with this one, Alan. I have posted that there are two kinds of socialism, national socialism (often called fascism) and Marxian socialism (communism), here ad nauseam.”

And so it goes on.

The new right-wing propaganda has two aims; first, it attempts to cast them as the true right-wing by implying that the Nazis were really ‘left-wing’, and, secondly, in doing so, they think they have created a bin into which the left, because of their anti-Zionism, can now be thrown.

As most true German socialists of the day would attest, or would if there were any actually left, there was absolutely nothing at all ‘socialist’ about the Nazis beyond the word being used in the title of the Nazi party; indeed, it was socialists in the main with whom Hitler’s Brownshirts battled in the streets of Germany prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor in 1933 and rounding up most of the socialists in Germany, and wherever else he could find them, before trying to exterminate them along with everyone else that didn’t fit their political, cultural and racial mould of his Greater Germany.

In the early days there were some Germans deluded enough to actually believe that the word ‘socialist’ in the Nazi party’s name actually did mean that Hitler’s party had socialist leanings and for a while Hitler was quite happy to allow the myth to continue as he built up the party’s numbers and strength using its following to give the party an air of popularity. The delusion was shattered and the myth was dispelled in July 1934 when Hitler and his SS and Gestapo purged the ranks of the massive Brownshirt movement which was the SA. In part this was done more than anything else to appease the extremely un-socialist German military that were beginning to see the SA rabble as a rival to their own power. In short, for Hitler, the SA had fulfilled their role and what few ‘socialists’ had found their way into the Nazi party soon found themselves purged from it or converted to Nazism.

But here’s where the propaganda really back-fires on the right-wing Zionists and their supporters in the West. This early history of the Nazi party to which some deluded socialists, and even communists, initially flocked to, actually reflects much of the early history of Zionism as it established itself in Israel. The early rank and file Kibbutzim movement was made up predominately of those that thought of themselves as socialists, communists and generally left-wing. Many leftish Europeans and Americans, both Gentile and Jewish, made the ‘pilgrimage’ to a Kibbutz in Israel for a year to experience a taste of socialist life. Israel’s early economic and domestic and social policies were essentially left-wing and, indeed, to a certain extent, still are.

Essentially, the new propaganda is really just another attempt to prop up the ‘anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism’ meme which the Zionists have been trying to push with vigour in an effort to counter the influence that Mearsheimer and Walt’s best-selling book ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’ had on the anti-Zionist movement since it was published.

The new propaganda, in the end, does nothing except demonstrate how desperate the right-wing have become in trying to protect Zionism from its inevitable collapse.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
All material on this site is available for use without permission but it would be appreciated if the source is acknowledged.